Washington

Obama begins week-long holiday in Hawaii

Obama begins week-long holiday in HawaiiWashington  - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday began a week-long vacation with family in Hawaii, pulling back from the campaign trail after a new poll this week showed that nearly half of Americans felt they had been hearing "too much" about Obama lately.

Obama said the unrelenting pace of a historic primary campaign against Hillary Clinton had given him little time to rest, unlike his Republican rival John McCain who wrapped up his party's nomination three months earlier, in March.

US citizen who spied for China gets 15-year prison sentence

US citizen who spied for China gets 15-year prison sentence Washington  - A US citizen was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison on Friday for spying on behalf of the Chinese government, the Justice Department said.

Tai Shen Kuo, 58, pleaded guilty in May on a charge of conspiracy to deliver national defence information to a foreign government. Kuo provided a Chinese contact with the details of US arms sales to Taiwan and other secret US military communications from March 2007 until his arrest in February.

US sends envoy to Georgia seeking ceasefire, Rice in talks

US sends envoy to Georgia seeking ceasefire, Rice in talks Washington  - The United States is sending an envoy to help bring about a ceasefire in the escalating conflict in Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region, the US State Department said Friday.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had also been in contact with a number of foreign officials to seek an end to the hostilities, which threatened to turn into a full-out war between Russia and Georgia.

Computer simulations show how special our solar system is

Solar SystemWashington, August 8: A new study by Northwestern University astronomers has used computer simulations to show how special and unique our solar system is.

Prevailing theoretical models attempting to explain the formation of the solar system have assumed it to be average in every way.

But now, the astronomers from Northwestern University have used recent data from the 300 exoplanets discovered orbiting other stars, to turn that view on its head.

The solar system, it turns out, is pretty special indeed.

Last common ancestor of Neanderthals and humans lived about 660,000 years ago

Washington, August 8: The complete Neanderthal mitochondrial genome sequenced from a 38,000-year-old bone has shown that the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and humans lived about 660,000 years ago, give or take 140,000 years.

Analysis of the new sequence confirms that the mitochondria of Neanderthals falls outside the variation found in humans today, offering no evidence of admixture between the two lineages, although it remains a possibility.

The findings open a window into the Neanderthals’ past and help answer lingering questions about our relationship to them.

Mars clay “layer cake” adds to evidence of the red planet’s watery past

MarsWashington, August 8: A new study has suggested that a Martian “layer cake” of clay minerals sliced open by an ancient channel adds to evidence of the red planet’s watery past.

According to a report in National Geographic News, a deposit of four-billion-year-old clays—some of the oldest exposed minerals on the planet—extends over a wide area in the western part of the channel, suggesting that a large body of water once covered the region.

The clays could be key to determining which areas of Mars, if any, were habitable and how long life-sustaining conditions might have lasted.

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